This week on NVTC’s Blog, Business Development, Marketing & Sales Vice Chair Jenny Couch of member company Providge Consulting shares critical changes to the IT landscape that your healthcare organization needs to have on its radar.

These days, technology seems to advance too rapidly for most of us to keep up. It’s certainly moving too rapidly for organizations to keep up with every single one of the “hot” trends.

In the noisy field of today’s latest tech, it’s all too easy to get caught up in the buzzwords and lists of “This Year’s Hottest IT Trends”, and miss the truly critical changes to the IT landscape that your organization needs to have on its radar.

The healthcare industry is uniquely positioned to be impacted by a convergence of critical IT trends within the coming years. But with budgets decreasing, and resource pools shrinking, it’s more challenging than ever to prioritize IT needs within the healthcare space.

We’ve highlighted the top five technology trends healthcare organizations must have on their radar in 2016.

Cloud computing. Whether it’s a pharmaceutical company needing to store large amounts of data from clinical trials, or a hospital with a newly implemented EHR system, healthcare organizations of all kinds are increasingly turning to cloud computing for a variety of uses. According to Healthcare Informatics, the global healthcare cloud computing market is expected to reach $9.5 billion by 2020. And 83 percent of healthcare organizations are already leveraging the cloud. Only 6 percent of organizations have no plans to take advantage of the cloud in the coming years. If you’re in that 6 percent, it’s time to reconsider your plans. Cloud computing can be used to decrease costs, improve access, and create a better user experience for any healthcare organization. But, it’s critical that your organization take a strategic approach to moving to the cloud. Learn more about how you can leverage the cloud to best support your organization here.

The Internet of Things. Take a look at that FitBit on your wrist. Think about the incredible amount of data that one tiny device is generating constantly. The number of steps you take, the calories you burn, your sleep pattern, the stairs you climbed. These devices get more accurate and more intricate with every passing day. We are not far off from a future when we’ll be able to monitor nearly every aspect of our health, and the health of our loved ones without setting foot in a doctor’s office. Healthcare organizations will have to find a way to address what will be tectonic shift in how care is delivered. Communication methods will need to be established to collect the data generated by wearable and mobile devices. Methods for collecting and analyzing the influx of data will need to be developed so patterns can be identified. The manner in which treatment is delivered will have to change as we move away from the traditional doctor’s office visits, and into a world where a diagnosis can be made through analyzing the information generated through a patient’s mobile device, car, appliances, wearables, etc. And while this future may not quite be a reality, it’s coming soon, and healthcare organizations need to start preparing today.

Data Explosion. Big data. Data analytics. Whatever term you use, the unparalleled rise in the amount and accessibility of data over the past few years is certain to have a massive impact on the healthcare industry. The explosion in big data occurred so quickly that 41 percent of healthcare executives say their data volume has increased by 50 percent or more from just one year ago. 50 percent in just one year. This incredible increase in data will allow medical professionals to more quickly and more accurately diagnose patients, but as with the Internet of Things, it will require fundamental shifts in how data is managed and how care is administrated. Healthcare organizations will need to train, or hire a workforce with the right data analysis and medical skill sets. Regulations, processes, and platforms will need to be developed or implemented. Healthcare organizations who ignore this trend do so at their own peril. For as Accenture notes in a report released earlier this year for those who take advantage of the wealth of opportunity within big data, “Greater operational excellence and improved clinical outcomes await those who grasp the upside potential.”

Efficiency in IT. If you haven’t heard the phrase “Doing more with less” in the past few months, it’s probably time to climb out from under that rock you’ve been living under. With healthcare spending wildly out of control in the United States, every healthcare organization from physician’s offices to the largest hospital chains are being asked to do more with less. IT is a particularly ripe area for cutting costs, and resources. In 2016, the emphasis on doing more with less in IT will continue. Expect to see IT departments pursue options such as moving to the cloud, outsourced managed services, and bring your own device to help decrease IT operating costs.

Cybersecurity. In 2014, 42 percent of all serious data breaches occurred at healthcare organizations. Sadly, this trend is certain to continue its upward trajectory in the coming years. Healthcare organizations who have not adequately upgraded their systems, and developed a thorough cybersecurity strategy are especially vulnerable to attack. Now is time to evaluate your systems, processes, and resourcing. Make sure your organization is positioned to proactively protect against attacks where possible, and identify and respond rapidly to breaches when they do occur.

Planning your 2016 health IT projects and priorities? Looking for a partner that will truly understand the challenges you are facing and the need to ensure success? Get in touch with us today. Our experienced health IT experts know the obstacles you face, and are ready to partner with you to deliver your projects on time, and on budget in 2016 and beyond.

This post was written by Jenny Couch. Couch is a project management consultant, and Providge’s Business Development Manager. She loves efficiency, to-do lists, and delivering projects on-time and on-budget.

NVTC is inviting members and industry leaders to serve as guest bloggers, sharing insights and information on trends or business issues relevant to other members. This week, Kathy Stershic of member company Dialogic Research and Communications shares how public sector CIOS can and should prepare to take advantage of the Internet of Things while creating a secure, trusted foundation for the long term.

Gartner defines IoT as “the network of objects that contain embedded technology to communicate and sense or interact with their internal states or external environment.” At present, that generally means a machine-to-machine connection, although an expanded ‘Internet of Everything’ may well evolve to include people-to-machine and process-to-machine connections in an ever-growing ecosystem.While select commercial applications are beginning to appear, at this very early stage IoT is one area in which Public Sector IT has a unique opportunity to lead—creating large scale deployments driven by constituent demand, growing security threats, and the economic imperative to “do new with less.” For example, smart street lighting solutions can reduce crime while saving money; combined water management, smart grid and waste management can yield greater ROI on energy investment; connected warfighters can bring dominance to the battlefield, faster.

While the opportunities are many, so are the risks. IoT presents exponentially increased threats in a dynamic landscape. There is no more network perimeter. Embedded, non-standardized sensor hardware creates an increased number of connected threat points, many of which will result from the ‘smartification’ of traditionally dumb devices never intended for software or IP and built by manufacturers not accustomed to thinking about digital security.

There is a pending vast amount of data to be generated by new sources—how must it be secured as it moves and permutates? The public internet is highly vulnerable, but even isolated networks are not impermeable— think back just a short time to Stuxnet.

Human error is a leading security concern, whether due to inadequate data security policies, non-adherence to existing policies, intentional malicious acts, or even the increasing shift to BYOD.

IoT success hinges on trust, making privacy another major issue. What data is captured and stored? How? Who owns it? How may it be used? How should and will it be protected through its use cycle, and by whom?

While these challenges apply generally to IoT deployments, the Public Sector faces some truly unique and consequential situations. Consider the implications of generating data that precisely reveals the location of dismounted soldiers in combat, the specific timing and location of municipal buses en route, safe campus video monitoring, or public health threat information, to name just a few.

Given the enormous changes that IoT will eventually bring, Federal regulation and policy are inevitable but will remain unclear for some time, politics being what they are. State and municipal-level policies vary greatly. Policy needs to be appropriately aligned to possibility for each environment, but some formidable issues must be addressed first:

- Data Collection. Many public sector mission and business leaders want to collect data from untrusted sources that can facilitate better, faster decision-making, such as improving threat, health or environmental analysis. But many current cybersecurity policies conflict with data collection, limiting what can be captured. The pressure is on IT to open up, yet security can’t be compromised.

- Cybersecurity. To date, the market has been served with a complexity of disparate point solutions, mostly focused on prevention. Defense will always be the priority goal, but with malwares proliferating at two per second (and accelerating), a 100% prevention strategy is simply not possible. Malicious actors need to be right only 1% of the time or less to permeate the firewall. Therefore, it’s not only prudent but necessary to prepare for the full aBack conCnuum―before, during and aEer. An appropriate solution requires layers of security that span prevention, halting an attack in progress, and accelerating remediation after it occurs.

- Bandwidth will always be limited, but data volume is only growing, with much of it useless—driving the need for edge-based data analytics to ensure the flow of just the most relevant data to those who will make use of it. Policy must guide what is considered most important and relevant, and who needs to receive what level of information.

- Cloud. Not surprisingly, as adoption of cloud-based services increases, incidents of cyber-attacks on cloud environments are now nearly on par with attacks of on-premise equipment. IoT connectivity will force a growing intersection of domains in the cloud environment: sensors and networks, IaaS and SaaS, Big Data analytics—yielding an increasingly expanded and vulnerable enterprise environment. Persistent security enforcement and information management policies are needed, where responsibility is shared between the service provider and the customer, to protect the data and the devices and people connected to it.

What then must CIOs consider when preparing for Trusted IoT deployment?

Given these challenging issues, Public Sector CIOs should lay some important groundwork when embarking on their IoT journey:

- Carefully plan the number and scope of initial IoT deployments that an organization can afford to undertake, including the investment in the needed people and skills, applications, analytics technologies and risk mitigation required to capitalize on the opportunity value: IaaS/SaaS, cybersecurity and Big Data. In an era of ridiculously tight budgets, existing infrastructure must obviously be leveraged as much as possible.

- Establish and maintain trust throughout the data lifecycle. Consider solutions like Suite B encryption (devised by the NSA), which secures data out to the tactical edge. Reliable firewalls between cloud and fog network nodes are also needed. Beyond the technology, only capture data that is truly needed for the business or mission purpose, then be transparent with citizens and stakeholders. Let them know what is collected, why, how it’s used, and how it’s managed and protected. Provide easy opt-outs when possible.

- Prepare for the full attack continuum. Design a robust security platform rather than approaching security from a point-topoint perspective. A combined hardware and software platform managing the connection, the applications, the devices and the data will enable CIOs to more readily enforce security policies and provide for security persistency. Correctly applied analytics can identify an attack in progress and help to remediate damage more quickly, but this approach will require intelligent information stewardship along with tight security.

- Educate the workforce. Push security messages frequently. Set reasonable access and geo-fencing policies that balance the desire for expanded data collection with the need for security, then enforce them as much as possible. Revisit them annually to assess and accommodate changing stakeholder requirements.

- Explore innovation partnerships with the private sector to create technical and policy solutions to IoT challenges. Feasible solutions can later be adopted cross-domain to maximize the potential benefits.

The Internet of Things has the potential for sweeping disruption, perhaps on par with only a few milestones in recent history such as World War One and the Industrial Revolution. While IoT may forever change the way public sector leaders protect and serve, trust is paramount to IoT success. Constituent participation will be weighed as a trade-off for utility received, such as a better citizen experience or increased public safety. Thoughtful, holistic planning should include not just the technological, but the fiduciary, legal and ethical aspects that will engender trust and drive to the greatest public good.